At the very onset of even a slight sense of your sinfulness and the danger of remaining in it, delve ever deeper into yourself, and with even greater force of thought conquer yourself with threats and sobering ideas; using them, shake up and soften your insensitive heart, as a heavy hammer softens a rough stone.
Remember your fate. Say to yourself: "Alas, soon will come death." . . . Do not estrange yourself from this hour of death. . . . Then imagine clearly what will happen to you at the time of death and afterwards. . . . Your secret sins will be reproached before all the angels and saints. There, before everyone's face, you will stand alone with your deeds. . . . Feel all this vividly and force yourself to remain in it until you are filled with fear and trembling.
Then turn to God and place yourself, defiled and weighed down by many sins, before the face of Him, the omnipotent, omniscient, all-gracious and long-suffering! . . . [H]asten to awaken and strengthen within yourself godly pity and sorrow.
Remember that you are a Christian redeemed by the blood of Christ, cleansed with the water of Baptism. You have received the gift of the Holy Spirit; you have sat at the table of the Lord and are nourished by His Body and Blood. And you have flouted all this for the sake of sin that destroys you! Ascend in thought upon Golgotha, and understand what your sins have cost. Will you really still wound the head of the Lord with the thorns of your sins? Will you still nail Him to the Cross, pierce His side and mock His long-suffering? Or perhaps you do not see that by sinning you participate in tormenting the Saviour, and thereby share a part in the tormentors' lot. But if you abandon sin and repent you will partake of the power of His death. Choose one or the other: either crucify Him, then perish eternally--or crucify yourself, and inherit eternal life with Him.
Consider further what that sin you cling to is. It is an evil more disastrous than all evils. It separates you from God, wreaks havoc on your soul and body, torments your conscience, brings upon you God's punishment in life and at death; and after death it sends you to hell, closing Paradise to you forever. What a monster it is to people! Bring to your sense all the evil of sin, and force yourself to abhor it and reject it.
Finally, look at sin from the point of view of the devil, who was its first creator and propagator, and see for whom you work by sinning. God has done and will do everything for you, but you do not want to please Him. The devil has done nothing for you, only tryannizes you with sin, but you willingly and indefatigably work for him. You befriend him through sin, and he does evil to you through it. He entices you to sin by promising its sweetness, but those who fall into sin he torments and tortures. . . . Realize all this and arouse yourself to hatred for this man-hater and all his works.
--The Path to Salvation, pp. 137-139
Posted by Clifton at March 12, 2004 06:00 AM